In the first days of the invasion, the priest of the Christian church, Yuri Babinets, not only calmed down and shepherded the flock, but rose up with his whole family to fight the enemy.
Priest and current military chaplain and volunteer Yuri Babinets, together with his sons Anton (22), Aleksei (24) and friend Ruslan Gorov, were the first to meet the Russian military convoy in Motyzhin, near Kiev, on February 26 at 12:55 p.m. They were the first to open fire on enemy tanks. Of the weapons, they only had a grenade launcher, a pistol and two machine guns…
“I held a grenade launcher for the first time. I drove the car to the position and read the instructions. It’s good that there was a drawing on the corps, where and for what to press” – the eldest son of the priest Aleksei Babinets recalls how they went to meet the enemy’s equipment column in Motyzhin (Butchansky District). – “I was most worried about missing the mark because I only had one shot…”
“I prayed that God would receive our souls in heaven”
The day before, Yuri Babinets and his sons registered with the national defense, which was led by Igor Sukhenko, the husband of the village elder Olga Sukhenko. It was the bodies of Igor and Olga, together with the body of their son Alexander, that were found in the infamous “Motyzhin Well” after the liberation…
“Igor gave us a grenade launcher, they call it a “fly”. We got into the cars and drove out of the village to meet the tanks,” Yury recalls. “My oldest son is an architect, so I decided that Aleksei would probably understand these instructions. On the way, I realized that we were going in one direction and it was unlikely that we would make it back. Therefore, I prayed that God would receive our souls in heaven. I was sorry that both of my sons and I had to die and our family would end.”
On the way, Aleksei took a selfie in the car and posted it on social networks with the words “I love everyone! Slava Ukraini!” The battery was only 1%, but he managed to send his wife a personal message: “I love you” and turned off the phone.
“There are four of us, but against us is a column of Russian tanks”
They stood in the middle of the road and saw a column of tanks marked with “V” coming towards them. There were 15 cartridges in the gun, Alexei had 7 magazines for two machine guns and one grenade launcher. When the column of vehicles was 400-500 meters away, the men opened fire…
“It was very scary,” Anton, the youngest son, joins the conversation. – “There were four of us, but against us was a column of Russian tanks. My legs were really shaking. I realized that we cannot stop tanks with such a set of weapons. Tears began to flow from my eyes by themselves, I realized that now that’s all, once upon a time there was a young Anton who lived his short life…”
“I knelt down and aimed with the grenade launcher,” said the older brother Aleksei. – “I prayed, repented and prepared to die. At first it was scary and then all I thought about was how not to miss the mark. Because I had the most powerful gun and I only had one shot and I didn’t know how to use the grenade launcher. Good thing the case had a picture with instructions…”
Then the column stopped. The men expected the worst. But the tanks changed direction and left for the village of Kopylov. The defenders remained in their positions because they did not know the intentions of the racists.
Partisans with chainsaws stopped the tanks
After a while, 10 cars drove up to them, with local men armed with chainsaws, who began to cut trees and block the road with them, so as not to let the enemy into Motyzhin and Kiev.
“The men cut down the trunks so efficiently and close to the ground,” recalls Yury. “But I suggested that the trees be cut down so that high stumps remain, so that the trees would be in the way of military equipment and those who go around would be stuck because of the high stumps.”
Later, a truck arrived with a mechanical manipulator and unloaded concrete blocks. A local man had just brought them to his father at the construction site and even managed to unload them. But when he heard the shooting, he reloaded them with the manipulator and brought the blocks to the edge of the village.
The plan was that the tanks would not go along the road, but along the fields and remain stuck there. In fact, that’s what happened.
The assistant commander of the Airborne Assault Brigade, who was responsible for adjusting the targets of the Bayraktars during the recapture of Motyzhin, said that it was here that about 7 units of equipment were stuck. But the blocks… But the Russians shot the blocks and drove past the village.
But by that time, Yuri with his sons and Motyzhin’s men had already decided: they did everything they could, there was no point in going against the tanks with their bare hands and they returned to the village.
There is a rehabilitation center “Vosor” in Motyzhin, which is managed by Yuri Nikolayevich. About 20 people live in difficult conditions. The entire Babinets family was there during the occupation.
And when the enemies tanks wandered in the field on the edge of the village (for about an hour they did not know where to go), Yuri called a familiar security officer and gave them the coordinates of the Russian tank column. He was warned that the artillery was about to start – they had to take cover, because they could get hurt.
“All of us – my family, those being rehabilitated – went to our small basement,” Yuri continues. – “My mother’s heart became sick. She said She was dying and asked for an ambulance. But how to die now and what an ambulance… The four of us carried her to the basement. There were about 30 of us there.”
Yuri recalls that they masked the entire territory of the rehabilitation center, turned off car alarms, covered the windows with blankets.
“It was so dark during the day, everything was walled up, we turned off the lamps in the rooms. I also thought that when I get back home, I will turn on the light in all the rooms and not turn it off for days.”
And then the rashists started looking for rural activists and defenders of the state. Telephones were checked, correspondence was examined, neighbors were called, soldiers were searched for. Therefore, at the beginning of March, Yuri Nikolayevich decided to leave the village in order to save the lives of the residents of the rehabilitation center.
A few days after his departure, rashists arrested and tortured the village elder, her husband and son. They found lists of public defenders. Among them were the names of the Babinets family…
Based on the materials of Segodnya.ua.
Text and photo: Как пастор с сыновями останяли танки россиян – military history of peaceful people (obzor SMI) | News in Victory
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